Andrew Hazelden's Blog

Icelandic Volcanic Ash

I recently was given a sample of volcanic ash from Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull Volcano. This is the volcano that caused air traffic interruptions in May 2010 throughout Europe due to ash drifting several kilometers high in the atmosphere. The ash has a dark gray appearance and the particle sizes varied greatly. I examined the ash under a trinocular microscope at 45x and 90x magnification. Large particles of the ash had a diameter of 0.72 mm, medium sized ash particles were around 0.24 mm, and small ash particles were 0.05 mm and smaller. I used Helicon Focus to DOF (Depth of Field) Stack the microphotographs for clarity.

Measuring ash particle sizes using calipers.

DOF Stacking

Volcanic Ash Pile

More Volcanic Ash

I just finished dissecting an old Microsoft Wireless Optical Mouse. The mouse uses a CMOS image sensor with a 22 x 22 pixel sensor with a total resolution of 484 pixels. The CMOS Sensor IC (Integrated Circuit) is cased in a clear 32 pin tqfp package that allows you to see inside it. The mouse was a wireless model and had two RF coils on the circuit board.

I used Depth-of-Field stacking to enhance the clarity of the two images taken under a microscope. This involves taking about 15 pictures under the microscope at different levels of focus and then using a DOF stacking program to merge the focused part of each image into one ultra clear image. Helicon Focus or Adobe Photoshop are two good DOF Stacking programs. There is a GIF-A-Mation at the bottom of this post that shows the RF Coil image at different levels of focus.

Microsoft Optical Mouse CMOS Sensor

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I was looking at some old vinyl records and though it would be neat to examine one under a microscope. Below are a few micro-photgraphs of the grooves in a vinyl record at 90X magnification. It is amazing how much dust can build up in the grooves!

Vinyl Record

Out of interest I played around with edge detection filters in various image processing applications. Based upon my preliminary results, I’m sure if someone had an automated way to capture a high resolution image of the whole record surface you could process the groove variations into a audio waveform without using a needle to create the sound.

You would need to perform a thorough cleaning of the record before hand to minimize dust which would drastically improve the recognition accuracy. Then you would image the vinyl record at 90X magnification using a motorized X / Y table. You would then stitch together a large digital microphotograph mosaic. The software would then have combine a polar to rectangular conversion to unspiral the tracks into a long linear waveform sequence. Then it would perform a vector tracing process and convert the data into a integer / floating point sound file based upon waveform amplitude.

Vinyl Record Grooves @ 90 X Magnification

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48 Hour Carniverous Sundew Plant Timelapse from Andrew Hazelden on Vimeo.

This is a timelapse movie of a carnivorous sundew plant taken over 48 hours. The sundew plant uses small tentacles with a sticky droplets at their tip to trap and digest its prey.

The timelapse was shot on a Canon DSLR connected to a microscope using an intervalometer.

Here is a microphotograph of MI-WON brand MSG crystals. Monosodium Glutamate is a popular food additive in Asian cuisine. The MSG crystals are roughly cylindrical in shape with a dimension of approx. 1.28mm long by 0.32 mm diameter and have a clear semi-transparent appearance.

Below are two microphotographs of a Super Bright Blue LEDs. The diode is located in a small cup shaped reflector which concentrates the emitted light rays.